A Culture Lesson from Eight Tipsy Japanese Hula Dancers
How a Drinking Party in Osaka Uncovered a Blind Spot
Over a decade ago, my wife and I had the good fortune to host twenty-four Japanese hula dancers who visited the Big Island of Hawaii to study traditional kahiko hula.
Our job was to facilitate communication, cooperation, and coordination between the local hosts and our Japanese guests. The overarching goal was to promote cross-cultural understanding while providing an authentic Hawaiian experience.
Over a four-day period, our guests underwent intensive instruction from hula master Kiwala’o, who covered the basics of kahiko hula, its spiritual foundations, and the appropriate chant for each dance they were learning. The training culminated on the final day with a gathering at the edge of Hawaii’s smoking Halema’uma’u crater, where students paid homage to Madame Pele (Hawaii’s volcano goddess) through the chants and dances they had learned.
I did not witness the event myself, as I was busy holding down the fort and making arrangements for the evening’s closing celebration. Thankfully, my better half was at the scene to support our guests and also capture the stunning image shown above.
Now my wife is not prone to hyperbole, nor is she spiritual, but if you believe her, it was an uplifting, awe-inspiring experience that ended with lots of hugging and crying. It helped that Madame Pele divinely intervened with a timely earthquake that occurred at the exact moment Kiwala’o made the offering pictured above. Uncanny.
And while our guests were dancing and crying and hugging up at the crater, I was scrubbing the floor of our carport, setting up tables and chairs, and equipping my makeshift stage for the surprise Hawaiian band I had hired. I also arranged for local-style food — or “grinds” as they say in Hawaii. And to make the experience truly authentic, we invited local friends so our guests could mingle directly with living, breathing human beings who embodied the aloha spirit.
And the party rocked! In a hula sort of way. Our guests, most of whom consumed copious amounts of beer and wine, spent the evening dancing hula in our carport, a lovely, unforgettable celebration.
When the party was over, the charter bus pulled up to our front gate, our guests danced their way onto the bus, then headed to their hotel in Hilo where they’d spend their last evening in Hawaii.
The Self-Deception Trap
Shortly after our guests departed the next day, we reviewed our evaluations. Imagine our delight when we saw nothing but glowing reviews:
An authentic experience!
Exceeded our expectations!
A life-changing event!
It was perfect!
As you might imagine, we were now pretty full of ourselves as we smugly basked in the afterglow of the project.
Truth is the gig did go well. So well that the friendships we cultivated endure even today.
At the time, I remember thinking that we couldn’t have planned for a better outcome. After all, when Madame Pele brings the magic and the customer showers you with praise, who wants to argue?
Well, on our next trip to Japan, we visited our new friends in Tokyo and Osaka. In two separate gatherings, our hosts graciously extended their exquisite brand of Japanese hospitality.
The Tokyo gathering was a hoot. Once again, our hosts showered us with glowing accolades, which only puffed us up even more.
But it was in the second drinking session with our Osaka friends when things got interesting. Nothing beats consuming adult beverages with Osakans if you’re looking for the unvarnished truth.
Japan’s East-West Rivalry
For folks unfamiliar with Japan, it’s worth taking a quick detour to mention that the Tokyo and Kansai areas — Osaka specifically in this case — represent two distinct subcultures within Japan, an East-versus-West rivalry with historical roots that run deep.
I’ll preface my comments by saying that I’ve only lived in the Eastern part of Japan, but I absolutely love Western Japan’s Kansai culture and have dear friends from the area.
As a native Chicagoan, I feel a particular kinship with Osaka folks. Just as Chicago is cast as the “second city” to New York, so it goes for Osaka, always in the shadow of Tokyo.
Even our sports teams have parallels. New York has the Yankees, Tokyo the Giants, both winning baseball traditions with a storied past. In contrast, Chicago and Osaka have the hapless Cubs and Tigers with just two measly championships between them in the last thousand years or so.
But what I love most about Osaka folks is that they march to the beat of their own drum. Just look no further than the oft-cited example of their escalator etiquette (pictured above): while Tokyoites uniformly stand on the left and leave the right side open to pass, Osakans keep to the right, a practice that never fails to warm my rebellious heart. These are my kind of folks — go Tigers!
Unlike my reserved friends in Eastern Japan who keep their cards close to the vest, with just a little nudging, my Osaka friends are much more inclined to show their hand. And if we Americans like anything, it’s knowing where we stand.
Public Stance Or the Real Story?
With this backdrop, the after-hours drinking party with our Osaka friends will make more sense. But before going there, let’s explore one more cultural concept pertinent to this discussion: honne-tatemae.
The first term in this pairing of words is “honne”, usually translated as “one’s true feelings”. The second word, tatemae, roughly means “the truth for public consumption.” (For more on this, check out “Are Any Cross-Cultural Topics Off-Limits?”)
The Japanese don’t have a monopoly on honne-tatemae, as it manifests in all cultures, albeit to different degrees. One key difference between Japan and my culture is that the Japanese have an expression that precisely describes the dichotomy, which means Japanese culture openly acknowledges that a gap indeed exists between what people say and what they are actually thinking.
Most Americans know deep down that the dichotomy is real, but we tend to sweep it under the rug because to acknowledge it is to admit we’re not always the straight-shooters we claim to be. (Indeed, the idealized value on “truth” is dominant in the West, while the dominant value in Japan is harmony.)
And while Americans are known to practice their own version of honne-tatemae, we don’t have an equivalent expression. The closest that comes to mind is “to tell a white lie”, but even this doesn’t quite capture the essence and spirit of honne-tatemae.
The point of mentioning this is to highlight the challenge of getting past a Japanese person’s tatemae and coaxing out the true honne, especially in the early stages of a relationship.
Note that this honne-tatemae framing applies to the Japanese populace at large, but I think it’s fair to say that Osaka folks tend to be a little looser in revealing their true feelings than their cultural cousins in Tokyo — especially after consuming a few adult beverages.
But no matter where you are in Japan, as a rule of thumb, drinking is usually the quickest path to honne.
Honne, Osaka style
Now back to our story…
So there we were in a noisy Osaka beer joint pounding mugs of draft beer with our fun-loving hula friends. And the more we partook of the frothy brew, the more their elusive honne bubbled to the surface.
Turns out there was, after all, just one teeny-tiny problem with our event — no, with my event! The one thing my dear wife had put me in charge of, the final celebration, left our guests with a bad taste in their mouth. Not literally. The food we served tasted fine. But our friends said the portions were way too large and that they felt terrible leaving so much food uneaten. In their words, it was “mottainai” or “wasteful.”
As the guy tasked with cleaning up after the party, I can attest that the ladies indeed left about half their portions untouched. The rest went in the trash because our guests were scheduled to leave early the next morning, a situation that made it impractical to wrap up the food to go.
This was totally on me.
Inappropriate portion sizes might seem like a trivial matter, especially if you err on the side of abundance like I did. But this is a great example of stumbling over an invisible culture gap with the best of intentions.
In the spirit of Hawaiian hospitality, I deliberately procured large individual portions to ensure we didn’t run out of food and our guests left satisfied.
Problem is, if you’re from a country with limited natural resources like Japan, wasting anything — especially food — is a big bad no-no.
What our Osaka friends were telling us in their gentle, respectful, boozy way is that I failed to anticipate the optimum portion-size, and the resulting waste stuck in their craw.
Shame on me for not anticipating this from the start, as I absolutely should have known better. The silver lining is that, thanks to our straight-shooting Osaka friends, I now do know better.
It might sound strange to call this a bonding moment, but it absolutely was in the most tangible sense. As I see it, our new friends felt comfortable enough in our relationship to provide constructive feedback, it just took a few beers to coax it out of them.
My drunken culture lesson notwithstanding, nothing beats connecting cultures in deep meaningful ways like this. Can’t think of a more fun and gratifying way to make a living.
Aloha nui.
© Tim Sullivan 2022
If stories about my cross-cultural triumphs and failures in Japan sound like fun, you can read all about ’em here.
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